Std 11 Innovation Lab

“What is now proved was only once imagined” said the poet William Blake. It is with this spirit that enthusiastic students from the ISC batch embarked on the 1st edition of the Std 11 Innovation Lab.

Following an online kick-off session, they were allocated to teams and encouraged to innovate within the themes of this year’s Lab: societal impact of Covid-19, bias in society, healthcare, environment & sustainability and food security & nutrition.

The Lab was spearheaded by Old Boy Vijay Nazareth, while the coordinating team comprised of ex-ISC students Akhila Jayaram, Lisa Brito, Prinson Pais and Lloyd Lobo. The mentors supporting the students also comprised of a majority of ex-ISC students namely, Roshni Gera, Nikita, Philip George, Deepika Chandresh, Ankita Jain, Ramya Parthasarathi along with more senior Old Boys Sanjay Balan and Veekshith Rai.

The participating students followed a rigorous schedule from October-December where they settled upon a social issue to solve and went through a number of steps including arriving at possible solutions and discussing how they would go about implementing the same. To achieve the objectives, teams had to effectively communicate with each other, manage their time well and apply their problem solving skills.

Their experience with first-hand innovation was also supported through a range of case studies coordinated by Lloyd Lobo. They were exposed to a wide variety of topics including rainwater harvesting, addressing bias in society for differently-abled individuals, mental health, data analytics in food security, countering gender bias in STEM fields and global warming. During these sessions, they posed thought-provoking questions to the moderators and have even gone on to form panels to drive action in the school and local communities.

Following completion of the programme, they presented to a panel of judges consisting of Mr. Meenakshi Sundaram, Dr. Marianne Nazareth, Mr. MD Ramaswami and Ms. Mahithi Bharatesh. The judges appreciated the innovative solutions the students came up with in such a short time. The winners were: